In 2010, the Education Foundation of Odessa partnered with the Odessa Junior League and the West Texas Food Bank to provide a sack of food items to be sent home in the backpacks of food-insecure children in Odessa.

Food 2 Kids started out feeding 150 elementary school kids. That number doubled in 12 weeks and by the next year the group was providing sacks of food for 1,200 students.

“Food 2 Kids was started as a backpack program, which feeds kids from Friday to Monday morning,” said Libby Campbell, executive director of the West Texas Food Bank and one of the founders of Food 2 Kids. “Teachers were actually paying for food for kids in the classrooms because they weren’t eating over the weekend.”

Now the program has expanded into 17 schools in Odessa, and a handful in Midland and the surrounding areas — feeding more than 2,300 kids. The board-run nonprofit that is supported by the food bank has hired its first paid staff member. Odessa native and former Food 2 Kids board member Craig Stoker took over in March as the first director of Food 2 Kids.

His position is two-fold. He’s the executive director of the Food 2 Kids and the nonprofit’s coordinator with the West Texas Food Bank.

“Our board runs our program from operations to delivery to funding in partnership with the food bank,” Stoker said.

The mission of Food 2 Kids is to provide food for the weekend to children who may not know where their next meal is coming from. Teachers discreetly tuck the bags of food into students’ backpacks during recess or lunch hour. The sack includes items such as juice, cereal, pudding, fruit cups and some type of protein. None of the items require heating or refrigeration. Each sack costs $6 and the nonprofit provides its clients with 32 sacks a year, so $192 can provide weekend meals for a child for the entire school year.

Because the food is stored in a WTFB warehouse in Odessa, where volunteers meet every Wednesday to assemble the sacks, the Food 2 Kids program has primarily been in Odessa schools. With the WTFB’s community volunteer center slated to open next year in Midland, Stoker hopes Food 2 Kids will be able to have more of an impact in the Tall City.

“The problem right now is, we don’t have a space in Midland,” he said.

Though some Midland churches run similar backpack programs, Food 2 Kids is only in Travis and Crockett elementaries this school year.

Greg Clark, director of the Jubilee Center, has overseen the program in Midland schools. With a director and the promise of a dedicated space in the new WTFB facility, Clark also hopes to see the program grow. Currently, he organizes a group of Midlanders to volunteer at the weekly sackings in Odessa.

“It’s hard to get people to meet me at 5 p.m. and drive to Odessa to sack at 5:30 p.m.,” he said. “Once we get over here we can sack over here and the program will have more prominence.”

Midland College’s Students in Philanthropy recently awarded the Jubilee Center a $3,000 grant that will go toward the Food 2 Kids program. Before that, MTCU Credit Union donated $5,700 to the center for Food 2 Kids.

“It’s a wonderful program,” Clark said, adding he’s glad the nonprofit has hired a director. “They do need a Food 2 Kids director because that program has grown.”

Stoker said he’s grateful for Clark and others who have helped the program expand beyond Odessa.

“The program works with a vast network of coordinators who make sure our programs in Midland, Big Spring, Pecos and Monahans continue to run smoothly,” he said. “The coordinators have done an amazing job keeping the Food 2 Kids program running in our partner communities. My hope is with a dedicated director handling the operations, the Food 2 Kids outreach can continue to grow.”

By spending his time handling the day-to-day operations and working to get the program into more schools, Stoker hopes the board can focus more on fundraising.

When asked about the nonprofit’s needs, his response is simple: money and volunteers.

“Less than $200 feeds a child and our sackings are every other Wednesday for an hour,” he said.

Stoker admitted he didn’t know there was such a need until a friend took him to a volunteer sacking. He spent an hour helping to assemble the sacks and left thinking, “I’ve got more than an hour, let’s see what else we can do.”

“It’s just a simple thing that everybody needs, but it gets overlooked and if you can just give a little bit of time and a little bit of money you can help fix that,” he said.